The Anatomy of a Habit
A simple and effective way to design great habits with purpose!
What we’re getting into today…
We all want to be more balanced, focused, and healthy. But creating habits can be hard.
The best habits are built when you start with the end result - what or who do you want to identify as?
Today we walk through a simple framework of how to identify the what, when, and why of the perfect habit.
Living your most balanced, focused, and healthy life and building your all around most productive self requires discipline and dedication. Identifying ways to improve your life by committing to good habits while identifying and reducing the bad habits you have created is not something that happens overnight and requires constant maintenance.
In my blog, Good Routine, Great Habits, we discuss how to approach your habits and make sure they become an integrated part of your daily life. But what about identifying good habits in the first place. Where do you start?
James Clear, the author of the best selling book Atomic Habits has a simple framework for building habits by identifying the person you want to be.
From there, the plug and play nature of the framework makes it super easy to align what, when, and why when it comes to your habits.
Today we breakdown his framework and build upon it for easy habit formation.
Finding Your Identity
We all want to be more productive, more focused, healthier, etc. That’s in part why you’re here today. But why do we want to get better? The root of our habits lie within the identity we want to create or portray.
What do you want to identify as? This could be…
A great dog mom
A healthy person
An awesome coworker
A financially responsible person
A dependable friend/family member
Whether or not you believe you are fulfilling this identity today, write down a few. We’ll use them here in a bit.
Building the Habit
Now that we know where we are going, WHAT are the actions you need to take to align with these identities and WHEN are you going to do it?
The “what” is your habit. This could be…
Go for a mile long walk
Read a chapter of my book
Eat a veggie
Connect with a friend/family member
The “when” is the time and/or location of when you are going to perform the “what”.
Every morning at 7am
After I close my laptop for the day
Once a day
Before I go to bed
Put it all together and you are able to form a simple sentence that identifies what, when, and why you are going to perform your new habit.
I will “what”, “when” so that I can become “identity”.
Extra Credit - Replace a Bad Habit
When doing this exercise myself, I like to take it one step further. Why not double down and eliminate a bad habit along with building a new one.
To do this I identify what I am replacing with my new habit. In this case, the sentence reads -
I will “what”, “when” instead of “what”, so that I can become “identity”.
Here are a few examples of habits that I have
I will go for a walk with Graham, each morning at 8am, instead of scrolling on Instagram so that I can become a better dog mom.
I will do a workout class, when I wake up, instead of laying in bed, so that I can be a healthy person.
I will call or text a friend, after I end my work day, instead of turning on the TV, so that I can be a more dependable and available friend.
Simple and effective!
Now Give it a Try!
Take your list of identities and work back to the “what” and “when”. What did you come up with?
Send us a note with the ones you’re going to incorporate. We’d love to share them!
Sam & Graham